After the surprise ruling by the Arizona Supreme Court to approve a Civil War-era law banning abortions except to save the life of the mother, the Friday edition of Amanpour & Co. (airing on PBS after first running on CNN International) hosted a predictably pro-choice liberal law professor as a guest. But the real liberal outrage spewed from guest host Bianna Golodryga, who let her own personal thoughts overwhelm any attempt at a balanced take, over the taxpayer-funded airwaves:
"Arizona has become Ground Zero for America's battle on reproductive rights," she said. "The U.S. Vice President, Kamala Harris, is in the state today, arriving hot on the heels of a decision by the Supreme Court there to hold up a Civil War era law banning nearly all abortions. A law Republican legislators then fought to protect. She is also going to send a clear message that a second term for Donald Trump means more bans, more suffering."
After blaming Trump for the ruling “by installing several conservative justices on the federal Supreme Court bench during his term” Golodryga introduced her guest, law professor Mary Ziegler, and emotionally commiserated with her:
As an expert on the history of the law, I would imagine you yourself were equally shocked to hear the ruling announced this week in Arizona. I mean, just the draconian measures that it takes, bringing us back to literally a judge who wrote it, having been appointed by President Abraham Lincoln at the time.
After citing Trump’s own criticism of the Arizona decision, she noted: “it really puts Republicans in a bind in a sense all of these years with their attempts to overturn Roe finally happening. It's as if the dog finally caught the car and the consequences are quite significant.”
But the host dismissed America’s federalist system of state law when she said that Trump’s rational view that abortion restrictions “should be done piecemeal up to the states is creating a lot of havoc. And obviously, at the end of the day it's women and their families and their doctors who are paying the ultimate price.”
She wasn’t finished, continuing her pro-choice monologue in the guise of an interview:
We know, obviously, that there are real-life consequences and impacts from these laws, primarily women and families who don't have the resources to travel to another state. The fact that they even have to speaks volumes. But let's just give one example. There's Katie Cox. She sued in Texas for the right to obtain an abortion after she learned that her fetus had a rare genetic disorder. She eventually had to leave the state for care. Listen to what she told NBC News about the impact of that.
Cox was also President Biden’s guest at this year’s State of the Union address, a political aspect Golodryga skipped.
The host prodded Ziegler to respond:
Can you talk about the emotional trauma and toll that this is having on women, on families? And it's very simple to just say this is people who are looking for an abortion, full stop. I mean, a lot of these women have suffered unimaginably. They may want to continue to have children in the future and now can't because of the risks that they take by leaving, by seeking care elsewhere, just give us some of that.
Ziegler is author of the 2022 book Dollars for Life: The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment, described by publisher Yale University Press as “A new understanding of the slow drift to extremes in American politics that shows how the antiabortion movement remade the Republican Party.” But on this segment at least, Ziegler's understated advocacy came off less liberal than the “journalist” interviewing her.
A transcript is available, click "Expand."
Amanpour & Co.
4/13/24
1:32:32 a.m. (ET)
Bianna Golodryga: Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Bianna Golodryga in New York, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour. Arizona has become ground zero for America's battle on reproductive rights. The U.S. vice president, Kamala Harris, is in the state today, arriving hot on the heels of a decision by the Supreme Court there to hold up a civil war era law banning nearly all abortions. A law Republican legislators then fought to protect. She is also going to send a clear message that a second term for Donald Trump means more bans, more suffering. A line we can probably expect to hear more of as an election season heats up. For his own part, the former president said that the Arizona ruling goes too far. But that's a stark contrast to Trump's previous campaign for the presidency, where he repeatedly promised to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision, which made abortion legal across the country. Something he made good on by installing several conservative justices on the federal Supreme Court bench during his term. So, what happens now, and how will this development impact women in Arizona and across America? Joining me now on this is law professor and author Mary
Ziegler. She's an expert on the history and politics of abortion. Mary, you're the perfect person to have on for this discussion. As an expert on the history of the law, I would imagine you yourself were equally shocked to hear the ruling announced this week in Arizona. I mean, just the draconian measures that it takes, bringing us back to literally a judge who wrote it, having been appointed by President Abraham Lincoln at the time. Just first, your professional reaction to that news.
MARY ZIEGLER, PROFESSOR, U.C. DAVIS SCHOOL OF LAW AND AUTHOR, "ABORTION AND THE LAW IN AMERICA": I think it both was and wasn't surprising. I mean, I think once Roe v. Wade was overturned, we knew that a lot of these zombie laws were on the books, and it was just a matter of time before a state Supreme Court let one of them go into effect. So, I think it's both hard to believe that Arizona, which is obviously a divided kind of purple swing state, is being governed by a law from before the Civil War, that, you know, by its terms, for example, says you cannot perform an abortion if a woman is going to suffer permanent impairment of a major bodily function or infertility, by its terms you're not allowed to intervene in those cases. That is shocking to me as a person, but as someone who studies this it seemed kind of inevitable after it was overturned.
GOLODRYGA: Yes, the only exceptions are the life of the mother, rape and incest are not included here and the decision the thought behind this decision by this very conservative Supreme Court is that with Roe no longer the law of the land that the statute is now enforceable, the statute, from the 1800s. What do you make -- I mean, is that too cute by half, given the concern -- despite the conservative nature of this court, for a State Supreme Court to come to that conclusion?
ZIEGLER: Well, and the argument in the case legally was actually pretty narrow. Planned Parenthood was arguing essentially that the state legislature, which had passed a 15-week ban, wanted 15 weeks to be the policy and that they had sort of intended to override this 1864 law, and the State Supreme Court didn't buy that argument. There could be other arguments you could make. For example, we've seen litigators across the United States arguing that an abortion ban like this would violate a state guarantee of equality or privacy or a right to life, and we may see additional challenges to the law in the Arizona Supreme Court. But I think that the problem for us, as far as the Arizona Supreme Court is concerned, is that these are justices who are subject to re-election. These are unlike the U.S. Supreme Court justices who have lifetime appointments. And if one of these justices were to lose their attention election, they would be replaced by from a list of nominees by the governor who in the case of Arizona is a Democrat. So, whatever the legal rationale for this ruling, the justices who joined the majority, I think, put themselves in the political crosshairs come November.
GOLODRYGA: Yes, and the court put this ruling on hold and then sent it down to the lower court for additional arguments on the law's constitutionality. So, this case has not ended as of yet. That having been said, I mean, it came 24 hours after the former president finally issued his policy and took a stance on his views on abortion by saying that it's up to the states and that that should be the end of the discussion. Here's what he said.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (R) AND CURRENT U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (R): Again, fighting Roe v. Wade was right from the beginning all about bringing the issue back to the states pursuant to the 10th Amendment and states' rights. It wasn't about anything else. That's what it was. We brought it back to the states and now lots of things are happening and lots of good things are happening.
GOLODRYGA: So, then, after this decision in Arizona, he went out and said that it was too far. Kari Lake who had supported this law beforehand then once it actually was handed down said that she didn't support it. I mean, this really puts Republicans in a bind in a sense all of these years with their attempts to overturn Roe finally happening. It's as if the dog finally caught the car and the consequences are quite significant. And the fact that, in his view, it should be done piecemeal up to the states is creating a lot of havoc. And obviously, at the end of the day it's women and their families and their doctors who are paying the ultimate price.
ZIEGLER: Yes, I mean, I think one of the things Former President Trump has done, too, is he's had former Trump campaign officials making promises, essentially, that Trump is going to revive another zombie law called the Comstock Act from 1873, just a little after this Arizona law, and use it as a nationwide ban on abortion. When you ask the Trump campaign about whether they're going to do that, the Trump campaign doesn't answer the question, and says that president -- Former President Trump is a supporter of states' rights. So, we're kind of in a scenario where patients and doctors don't know how these laws are going to be interpreted. And we don't know what Former President Trump would do if he's given a second term, because his former officials are saying he actually has this backdoor ban that doesn't require Congress. His campaign isn't weighing in one way or another. So, we're kind of all in the dark about what a second Trump administration would mean, whether it would mean more of the status quo, which has been kind of this state-by-state chaos, or if it would mean some kind of effort to have a nationwide zombie law like Arizona's imposed on states with protections for abortion rights and states that don't have protection for abortion rights. Because, you know, the Trump campaign just isn't explaining which of those positions is right, right, won't answer these questions directly.
GOLODRYGA: There are some Republicans like Lindsey Graham that say that the president -- the former president is just wrong on this, there should be a federal law with a 15-week ban. From your perspective, just the likelihood that you think something like that could actually happen.
ZIEGLER: Well, I think the likelihood of Congress passing anything like a 15-week ban is pretty much zero, which is why in part I don't think it made sense politically from Trump's standpoint to endorse a ban that's never going to pass.I think that's why you've seen the sort of smarter conservatives like the groups in the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 saying the only way we're going to get a nationwide ban is through a law that's already on the books that we're reinterpreting or reinventing as a ban. The odds of congressional action I think are very low.
GOLODRYGA: And what about Alabama? Because we see the tentacles of this extending far beyond just abortion, it's even into IVF and areas where now an embryo is viewed as a live person. And we saw the chaos that ensued following that. Republicans and Democrats have really benefited over the years from IVF. There was an attempt perhaps to codify that in Congress. That didn't happen. I mean, that's just one example. Do you expect more in other states, if not IVF, than other unintended consequences from the overturning of Roe?
ZIEGLER: Yes, absolutely. So, the U.S. anti-abortion movement was not focused on taking down Roe. It was focused in a bigger picture way on the recognition of the idea that embryos and fetuses are persons with constitutional rights. And that was kind of the thrust of the Alabama ruling. It was a little narrower, it was that embryos had rights just under the context of wrongful death. But the court's reasoning was much broader and suggested that embryos and fetuses just had rights across the board full stop. If that's right, that raises lots of other questions, not just about IVF. So, for example, if many conservatives believe that common contraceptives like the birth control pill or the morning after pill are abortifacients, that would violate fetal rights. If fetuses and embryos have rights, we've seen some in the anti-abortion movement asking why they can't punish women and other abortion seekers, because of course, women and other abortion seekers are punished for other homicide offenses. There are a lot of other possibilities here because if an embryo or a fetus is a person, they're a person for all purposes, like all contexts, all the time, not just the context of abortion. So, I think we'll have to stay tuned, but this is sort of a Pandora's box in many ways.
GOLODRYGA: A Pandora box has created a patchwork of different scenarios and laws in various states. If we can put up a graphic of the United States just in terms of what we've seen following the overturning of Roe, you have 21 states that ban abortion or restrict the procedure earlier in pregnancies now than the standard that had been set and had the law of land by Roe, 14 states have full bans in almost all circumstances, two have bans after six weeks. We know on Monday, Florida's Supreme Court allowed a six-week ban to go soon into effect, but voters will get to weigh in on that issue in the fall, and there is hope that the same will be the case in Arizona. With abortion on the ballot now, do you see this as a potential game changer and solution?
ZIEGLER: Potentially, right? So, ballot initiatives have been significant so far, all of them that have on ballot since Dobbs have passed. We've seen several in places like Michigan and Ohio create pretty broad reproductive rights that trumped some laws on the books. Michigan too had an older law that was undone potentially by this ballot initiative. The reason it isn't a perfect fix necessarily is, one, not every state has a mechanism for voters to initiate this kind of measure. And two, conservatives are already aware of this and are trying to find backdoor ways to get a federal ban that would override any state protections, which is where this Comstock Act idea comes in. Essentially, Jonathan Mitchell, who represented Former President Trump in his disqualification case before the Supreme Court, said to "The New York Times," you know, we don't need a ban because we have the Comstock Act. The Comstock Act can be interpreted as a ban, that overrides whatever protection voters put in place in their own states. So, I think the ballot initiatives are incredibly important, definitely a possible game changer, but not without potential pitfalls.
GOLODRYGA: We know, obviously, that there are real-life consequences and impacts from these laws, primarily women and families who don't have the resources to travel to another state. The fact that they even have to speaks volumes. But let's just give one example. There's Kate Cox. She sued in Texas for the right to obtain an abortion after she learned that her fetus had a rare genetic disorder. She eventually had to leave the state for care. Listen to what she told NBC News about the impact of that.
KATE COX, SUED TEXAS FOR THE RIGHT TO AN ABORTION: There's still -- we're going through the loss of a child. There is no outcome here that I take home my healthy baby girl, you know. So, it's hard, you know.
GOLODRYGA: Can you talk about the emotional trauma and toll that this is having on women, on families? And it's very simple to just say this is people who are looking for an abortion full stop. I mean, a lot of these women have suffered unimaginably. They may want to continue to have children in the future and now can't because of the risks that they take by leaving, by seeking care elsewhere. Just give us some of that.
ZIEGLER: Yes. I mean, I think one of things we've seen is that when you have an abortion ban in place, the meaning of abortion isn't clear. States are not using medical definitions. And in part, what that means is that people with wanted pregnancies who are experiencing pregnancy complications or stillbirth or miscarriage are finding themselves unable to get treatment too because physicians don't want to lose their medical licenses, they don't want to go to prison for anywhere between, you know, five years up to life in prison in states like Texas where Kate Cox was located. And the upshot of that is people are being turned away and experiencing complications that, you know, affect their health, their future fertility in their lives. The other upshot is that physicians don't want to deal with these scenarios, right? They don t want to be faced with patients like Kate Cox, where they're being forced to choose between their liberty or their medical license on the one hand and denying needed care on other. So, we began to see a flight of physicians, especially obstetricians and gynecologists from states with these kinds of prohibitions, particularly in rural areas that were already underserved. And that too has these knock-on effects for people seeking obstetric and gynecological care because they're having a harder time finding a position to treat them at all, even when they're not experiencing these pregnancy complications. So, one of the things we've seen is that these bans affect people who are seeking abortions, to be sure, but also people who aren't, right? People who may be experiencing anything else related to pregnancy.
GOLODRYGA: Mary Ziegler, we appreciate the time and your expertise. Thank you.
ZIEGLER: Thanks for having me.
